The Best and Worst Comic Book Movies, Ranked by the Numbers

Every list of comic book movies is an argument, so this one shows its working. For each film I opened its Box Office Mojo page for the worldwide gross and the budget, and its Rotten Tomatoes page for the critics' score, the audience score and where it streams in the United States this month. The fourth test is mine: did the film understand what made the comic worth adapting?

Five of the best, with one honourable mention, and five of the worst, in order. The numbers are as the pages showed them on 9 November 2026; grosses are not adjusted for inflation, which is why a 1978 film sits where it does.

1. The Dark Knight (2008)

Just over a billion dollars worldwide on a $185 million budget, and the rare case where critics and audiences agree to the point: both at 94 per cent. Heath Ledger's Joker won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, the first acting Oscar for a comic book adaptation, and the film's absence from the Best Picture list is the reason the Academy widened that category to ten the next year. It understood that Batman's comics are crime stories first; Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns is in its bones.

2. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

The best-reviewed film on this list, 97 per cent from critics, and the one that looks most like a comic: Sony's animators built their style on the pages of Sara Pichelli, who co-created Miles Morales. $395 million on $90 million, the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, and a lesson the live-action studios keep ignoring: halftone dots, panel borders and thought captions are not a problem to be solved, they are the point.

3. Logan (2017)

An R-rated Wolverine film about ageing, loosely taken from Mark Millar and Steve McNiven's Old Man Logan, made $619 million on $97 million and was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, the first live-action superhero film the Academy ever nominated for its writing. Critics 93, audiences 91. It works because it treats the comic as a character study rather than a franchise.

4. Superman (1978)

The most expensive film ever made when it opened, at $55 million, it returned $300 million and set the template every origin story since has copied: a slow first hour, a hero who is kind before he is strong. Critics 87, audiences 86, three Oscar nominations and a Special Achievement Award for its flying effects. Christopher Reeve's Clark Kent is still the most faithful performance of a comic character on film.

5. Persepolis (2007)

Marjane Satrapi drew her memoir of growing up in Tehran in black ink, and then co-directed the film in the same black ink, which is why it belongs here: 96 per cent from critics, the Jury Prize at Cannes, and the first Best Animated Feature nomination for a woman director. It made $23 million, small money, and proves the other half of my fourth test: fidelity to a comic's drawing can matter more than fidelity to its plot.

Honourable mention: Avengers: Endgame (2019)

The biggest number on any comic book page, $2.94 billion on a $356 million budget, with 94 from critics and 96 from audiences. It is off the ranked list only because it is not an adaptation of a comic so much as of twenty-one other films; as a payoff it is unmatched.

The worst: 1. Batman & Robin (1997)

The film that stopped Batman for eight years. $238 million worldwide sounds respectable until you see the $125 million budget and the scores: 12 per cent from critics, 16 from audiences. Director Joel Schumacher apologised to fans twenty years later; George Clooney says he still apologises for it. The lesson is not that camp fails, it is that the Adam West tone cannot sit on a $125 million production.

2. Catwoman (2004)

$82 million against a $100 million budget, 8 per cent from critics, and the most famous Razzie acceptance in history: Halle Berry collected Worst Actress with her Oscar for Monster's Ball in the other hand and called it a "god-awful movie". The film kept the name and threw away everything else about Selina Kyle, which is the fastest way to lose both comic readers and everyone else.

3. Madame Web (2024)

Sony's Spider-Man films without Spider-Man reached their end here: $100 million worldwide, 10 per cent from critics, 53 from audiences, and reviews that reached for the word "worst" more often than for the plot. Critics compared it to Morbius, and not kindly.

4. Morbius (2022)

$167 million worldwide and 15 per cent from critics, but a 71 from audiences, because a film this strange becomes a joke people enjoy telling: it was re-released on the strength of its own memes and bombed again. A living vampire from a 1971 Spider-Man issue deserved a horror film, not a franchise audition.

5. Fantastic Four (2015)

$168 million worldwide on a $120 million budget, 9 per cent from critics, 18 from audiences. Fox ordered reshoots in January 2015 after rejecting the director's cut, and Josh Trank blamed the studio for the result. Marvel's first family are explorers and a bickering household; the film made them a government project and forgot the bickering, which is the only part readers love.

The numbers at a glance

Worldwide gross and budget from Box Office Mojo; critics' and audience scores from Rotten Tomatoes, read on 9 November 2026. A dash means the page listed no budget.

Where to watch, United States, November 2026

As listed on each film's Rotten Tomatoes page this week: The Dark Knight, Superman, Batman & Robin and Catwoman stream on HBO Max; Into the Spider-Verse on Netflix; Logan, Avengers: Endgame and Madame Web on Disney+; Morbius on Prime Video and Disney+; Persepolis is rental only, through Fandango at Home. Streaming rights move monthly, so check before you sit down.

If you want the argument rather than the numbers, our piece on why Watchmen split critics takes one adaptation apart panel by panel, and our ranking of the greatest superhero runs is where most of these films came from.